Are reason and emotion equal in justifying moral decisions?

From the previous paragraph, we realise that one’s moral standards are determined by his emotions. This explains the bible verse in Romans14:12 which says ‘ happy is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves.’  Moral standards based on reason do not make one happy, for example, in a situation by where one is in a dilemma to choose between a competent leader and a friend who is incompetent for leadership. Emotion will give you reasonable justifications for voting for your friend, like that your  friend is more likely to serve you and listen to you, whilst reason will tell you that the competent leader is better for the whole population but voting for him would be irrational. So in this situation, emotion influences reason whilst reason cannot influence emotion because it would be contradicting itself. Therefore from the voter’s point of view, following his emotion would be the right thing to do in this situation but the population would find it wrong because their emotions would also influence their reason. In brief, it is observed that emotion guides each group’s moral decisions more than reason because emotion influences reason.

On the other hand, reason might question one’s moral standards based on emotion. For example, a Christian might question the reason why fornication is wrong and find no sensible justification. Reason would tell him that it is not wrong but his intuition would tell him it’s wrong and the Christian would trust his instinct because trust itself is an emotion. So emotion trusts emotion but emotion which is trust cannot trust reason, because emotion and reason are in a conflict in this situation. This explains why theists believe in God even if reason questions his existence whilst atheists are also adamant on their belief even if reason questions his unexistence. So although reason questions emotion, emotion dominates thus giving it more importance.

As the human conscience is inborn, it can be affected by the environment and experience. For example a child born in a polygamist family is more likely to find polygamy normal and be a polygamist, however he might decide never to be a polygamist due to all the negative experiences endured by him in his polygamist family. For the first decision, emotion influenced emotion as the parents’ beliefs influenced the child’s conscience whilst for the latter decision, the child’s decision was influenced by experience which involves reason and emotion. Firstly, the child might have been hurt by the negative experiences which is an emotion and then reason told him that polygamy is wrong because it harmed him. So in the circumstance of decisions based on experience, emotion and reason are equally important for justifying moral decisions as the emotion is dependent on the experience and the reason is dependent on the emotion.

In some cases, being fully rational or being fully emotional is considered immoral. For example if a hardworking rich man lives an extravagant lifestyle in a very poor and lazy community without even trying to help them, from a reason’s perspective it is right because he worked hard for what he has while they didn’t ,but it would be considered morally wrong because he is able to help the hunger-stricken community but he does not. On the other hand, if the rich man is fully emotional and works hard for the whole community for the rest of his life whilst they are idle, it would be unfair because the community is able to work but it decides to exploit the rich man. So this shows that emotion and reason are interdependent in terms of making moral decisions, too much of emotion or reason can be immoral.

So although one might argue that emotion and reason are equally necessary for making moral decisions because they are interdependent, i still believe that emotion has more importance because it subdues reason in most cases of making moral decisions, just the way a car and a human being are interdependent for faster travelling so are emotion and reason interdependent but the human being and the emotion are more important.